Arizona Now Latest State to Declare Porn a ‘Public Health Crisis’

Claiming that porn “perpetuates a sexually toxic environment that damages all areas of our society,” the legislature in Arizona on Monday made that state the latest to declare porn a “public health crisis,” when the state Senate voted to to pass a resolution that was approved by the House in February, as AVN.com reported.  Without citing any medical basis or scientific evidence for the claim, the resolution states that porn is "potentially biologically addictive and requires increasingly shocking material for the addiction to be satisfied,” CBS News reported.  One legislator who supported the bill—which passed on a largely party line vote with Republican support and Democratic opposition—said that she backed the resolution, even though it makes no changes to current law, because porn is “poisoning the minds of our citizens.” In fact, rather than, for example, income inequality, or systemic racism, or inadequate public education—it is pornography that is "the root problem for many of the other problems that we're experiencing,” said Republican Sylvia Allen, quoted by the Arizona Republic.  Last year, Kansas passed a similar resolution, as AVN.com reported, joining South Dakota, Utah, Virginia among others states that have declared porn a threat to “public health.” Though the various “health crisis” resolutions are essentially symbolic and have no legal “teeth,” by officially labeling pornography a public threat, state governments have opened the door to future regulatory measures supposedly aimed at protecting “public health.”  In addition, now that FCC rules protecting net neutrality have been repealed and appear unlikely to be reinstated as long as Republicans control the United States Senate, internet service providers looking to curry favor with state governments are free to block online porn sites, on the grounds that they threaten “public health.” Photo by Tobi 87 / Wikimedia Commons